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Tuesday, March 10, 2015

A gesture that won hearts but lost the match

This is a piece of incident that I found on the internet and felt like sharingThe following incident happened during the one off Golden jubilee test between India and England at Mumbai in the year 1980A gesture that won hearts but lost the matchThe ball fromKapil Devwent pastBob Taylorand was pouched behind the stumps by Syed Kirmani. The bowler and the ’keeper erupted in appeal and umpire Hanumantha Rao raised his finger. The Wankhede Stadium roared. The home team had not scored too many, but had fought back to have the Englishmen on the mat. The partnership between Ian Botham and Taylor, the same combination that had struck again and again on the previous day, had been broken, and England was struggling at 85 for six.But were they? Taylor believed that he had not touched it, but that mattered little. Standing at slip, Indian captainGundappa Viswanath— leading the country for just the second time — was convinced that Taylor had not nicked. As a bemused crowd looked on, he persuaded the umpire to change his decision. Taylor continued his innings, much to his own amazement.He hung on well into the next morning, batting 275 minutes to score an invaluable 43. The incredible spirit of the game demonstrated by Vishwanath had to be lauded, but it perhaps cost India the Test match.

UNFORGETTABLE GESTURE: England's Bob Taylor is recalled by Indian skipper G.R. Viswanath in the Golden Jubilee Test at Bombay in 1980.

Vishwanath himself rued that while people hailed Dhoni's decision to recall Ian Bell, no one seemed to remember this incident from the past“I didn't hear any of the commentators speak about that incident, neither did anyone refer to it,” the soft-spoken Viswanath seemed genuinely hurt